I had not considered the social implications of accepting
the concept of memes wholesale; the original proposition by
Dawkins was simply to state that genetics is a special case
of the more general concept of information propogation
through a selection process; as shorthand, he called the
general abstract unit of information a "meme." In his
model, each meme-based system would have its own special
bounds. In the case of genetics, it's the mode of encoding
(genetics) and the mode of filtering (natural selection).
In the case of concepts, its the mode of encoding (words,
logic, and mathematics) and the mode of filtering (the
biases and logic abilities of the different minds).

In this sense, I agree with Dawkins; genetics is merely a
special case of information propogation.

I had not considered what the close ties to genetics would
do in the minds of people not already familiar with the dual
concepts of genetics and information theory. Not long ago
(only about 7 years ago) I read an editorial in Newsweek
that suggested we prod the "upper-middle-class and rich
people" into having more children, and entice the "lower
class (that is, people on welfare)" (these were the words of
the author-- sorry, I don't recall the date of the issue nor
the name of the author) to have fewer children. His
reasoning was that, since the rich were obviously more
successful, they were genetically superior.

Social darwinism.

The idea of "social memetics," or even worse, "memetic
engineering," is repugnant. We don't understand the flow of
ideas in any real way; we can model it statistically, but
that is about it. Mostly, we don't uderstand the millieu of
the mind, which handles encoding, filtering, and propogation
of ideas-- the entire life-cycle. And since minds generally
don't work in isolation, we don't understand propogation of
ideas beyond a statistical level.

Really, we don't even understand how ideas are generated in
the first place.

I guess this is all just a rambling attempt to explain that
I agree with Kelly that memes are not a precise way to
describe the creation, propogation, and selection of ideas
or information, and that to take action based on this meme
hypothesis is dangerous.

Is this a catch-22? The meme concept is a great shorthand
for thinking about the flow of ideas (as long as you realize
that it is not derived from genetics; rather, genetics is
derived from it); but to understand it, do you need to
understand the more-rigorous idea of information theory? In
which case, you don't need the meme shorthand.

Sorry about these incoherent thoughts. But an idea is only
as good as the use to which it is put; and if the expression
of an idea (the phenotype, as it were) is wrong, then the
memotype (sorry, couldn't resist) is innapropriate. Not
"wrong," necessarily, just as a good genotype can lead to an
innapropriate phenotype.

Oh, well. It seems silly to talk about the meme concept in
terms of memes. Plus, the idea of memes is rather like
Freud's writings-- impossible to disprove, and therefore it
really has no place in science or logic.

(NOTE: I'm not saying some truths don't transcend logic.
I'm just saying they have no place in science.)

A Note:

Natural selection is not about survival of the fittest.
It's about survival of the most appropriate.

Hmm. Kelly
states that "Basically, [Martin Gardner's] main point is
that meme theory is a sexy but misleading way of explaining
something that can just as easily be explained by the boring
language of information exchange."

I'm not convinced the idea of memes is any different
than
information exchange theory. I see them as the same concept
as seen from two different frameworks. You could just as
easily explain the concept statistically, or through plasma
physics analogies.

The concept of memes is based in genetic theory.
Richard
Dawkin's main point when he invented the idea of memes is
that genetics is nothing more than information
exchange, where the information packets (genes) are weighted
in some manner. In genetics, natural selection does the
weighting (though natural selection deals with phenotypes,
and not genotypes, the result is statistically similar).

The concept of memes is nothing more than an abstraction
of
genetics, where you have information (a meme), some
transmission method (genes or ideas, perhaps), and a filter
mechanism (natural selection or minds). The concept of
memes came into its own whenother people starting proposing
that the general idea ofinformation evolution through
selection explains the increase in human knowledge.

Do I "believe" in memes? In the general sense, yes. In
the
specific sense, not really. In genetics, information is
transmitted digitally, in discrete packets, with very
specific rules about gene propogation. I see no true gene
analogue in ideas themselves, where the merging and
evolution of ideas can happen seamlessly across an unbounded
spectrum.

But I don't think the concept if the meme is fatally
flawed. In fact, I find it a very convenient shorthand for
the idea of weighted (or filtered) idea propogation. I
could be swayed, of course. I've not read Martin Gardner,
so I don't know his arguments; I don't know why he thinks
memes are misleading.

And given the choice between sexy and boring-- if all
else
is equal, I choose sexy.

Okay, the headings should be easier on the eyes now. . .
Sorry about that.

gnome-filer

Added a new plug-in for gnome-filer, a "text" object.
It's
just a text canvas item, but I should be able to use it to
create compound objects seamlessly. It's only a small step
to label, say, a rectangle object like this:

data_set (rectangle, "label", "This is a
rectangle");

Other
things

Jeez, so I'm spending work time on gnome-filer;
makes me
feel a little guilty, I guess, but I'm so freakin' bored
with regular work stuff. I'm waiting for the E450 to free
up (which'll happen tomorrow) so I can consolidate all those
ancient SparcStation 20s, and free up the E4000. So I'm
bored. Terribly bored.

In case anyone reads this:

I work at a place called "SEARHC," the Southeast
Alaska
Regional Health Consortium, in Sitka, AK. I'm the senior
DBA, in charge of the financial and medical databases.
Normally I love my job, so this angst is a bit misplaced.
Today I am just listless.

So, does this append, prepend, or add another entry for
entries of the same date? I'm about to find out.

COLLEGE

I've been to college. I spent some years as a physics geek,
ended up working as a student in the "media" shop in the
library, and from there worked on a Netware LAN. So I ended
up with a real job and dropped out.

I discovered Linux in '93, though. Some SLS distribution,
you know the one? Took 60 floppies. I loved installing
Linux. I found it one day while looking for Unix on
Usenet. I knew I wanted to learn a real OS, and was lucky
enough to get in when Linux only had about half-a-million
users.

That's about the only good thing college ever gave me,
besides fencing. Well, and perhaps the creative writing
classes. The ones that taught me not to use sentence
fragments. And said that prepositions are bad things to end
sentences on.

So, why do you care? I suspect you don't. But I was giving
away source code before I ever discovered Linux, or the GPL;
I gave away the source to a program called "Shepard," a TSR
that read keystroke sequences from a file, and used those to
exit out of DOS-based applications after a period of
user-inactivity. So my discovery of Linux, and the culture
it personified, made me feel at home for the first time.

I was completely disillusioned by the computer industry;
there was so much greed, when I first went to school for CS
(before I switched to physics), almost half the class had
never touched a computer before. They just knew there was a
lot of money in a career in computers. I realized then that
my love of computers, and my love of programming, didn't
much matter. It was like discovering that wrestling is
fake.

Now I'm slowly getting back into programming, and loving
every minute I geek.